Brian Krebs at the Security Fix has done an interesting study related to how long it takes Microsoft to release a security fix for a problem, starting from the time they are notified of the security vulnerability. For the most part, 134.5 days has been the window between notification and vulnerability patching for the last 2 years from Microsoft. (That is for vulnerabilities that were submitted to Microsoft through the normal process…)

For vulnerabilities that were “full disclosure”, “why don’t you tell the whole world….” style, in 2004 they were fixed within 55 days and in 2005 within 46 days. Now, “full disclosure” of vulnerabilities is controversial, many times it comes with exploit code which means any script kiddie will soon have tools in their reach that can exploit the flaw, but those that support full disclosure of vulnerabilities think that vendors respond more quickly. The survey would seem to back that up.

What’s interesting to me is this…. one of the arguments for the traditional process and the closed code concept is. If I discover a vulnerability, the assumption is that I inform Microsoft of the issue and (within 135 days) they fix it. The assumption is that no one else knows about it. There’s an interesting quote though from eEye’s Marc Maiffret…

“You’d think that by taking that much longer on patches Microsoft is being more thorough, but that’s not always the case as we’ve seen,” Maiffret said. “The truth is that unpatched Windows flaws have a value to the underground community, and it is not at all uncommon to see these things sold or traded among certain groups who use them by quietly attacking just a few key targets. So, the longer Microsoft takes to patch vulnerabilities the longer they are leaving customers exposed.”

So, it almost makes me think, in spite of the risks of full-disclosure, it doesn’t seem to be THAT bad a solution after all. Updates seem to come out quicker (at least this study seems to show that) and EVERYONE is at least aware of the problem and can deal with workarounds if they choose. It puts the security of the system back in the hands of the administrator.

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